Obama’s Speech In Colorado
It’s remarkable what a recent speech by Barack Obama contained. Obama gave a speech in Colorado Springs, Colo. and issued a call for service to our country (here’s the transcript). He said that the 4th of July was a time to reflect not only on your little world, focused on your little issues of putting food on the table, getting an education, “he bustle and busyness of what happens in your own life”, but “in the wider world – a story seen in headlines and websites and televised images; a story experienced only through the price you pay at the pump or the extra screening you pass through at the airport.” Imagine that. You only experience the wider world at the pump or the airport.
This is the divide that separates you from the ability to shape your own destiny
So, if you had no petty interests you could shape your own destiny? What crap!
Then Obama tells his story of subsuming his interests for community involvement and becoming the community.
There is a lesson to be learned from generations who have served – from soldiers and sailors; airmen and Marines; suffragists and freedom riders; teachers and doctors; cops and firefighters. It’s the lesson that in America, each of us is free to seek our own dreams, but we must also serve a common purpose, a higher purpose.
Did you catch the “but” and the word “must”. In other words we must serve a higher purpose; a higher purpose than seeking our own dreams! I’m all for volunteering to serve others, if you choose. I am not inclined to respond very well to those who say I must serve a higher purpose. Who’s to say that your purpose is better than my freely chosen purpose?
That is why I won’t just ask for your vote as a candidate – I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States.
But we need to ease the burden on our troops, while meeting the challenges of the 21st century. That’s why I will call on a new generation of Americans to join our military, and complete the effort to increase our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines.
Last December, in a similar speech he said:
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force
that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”
As President, I will expand AmeriCorps to 250,000 slots…
So when I’m President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you’ll have done 17 weeks of service.
For college students, I have proposed an annual American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000. To receive this credit, we’ll require 100 hours of public service.
Many of you worry about America becoming a fascist state. It is one thing to encourage our citizens to join this or that movement and justify it by its higher purpose. It’s another thing altogether to force people to do something. These issues of force don’t arise on the right, where you fear they will. They come from the left, because the left thinks it knows better how you should spend your time. It’s also the left that keeps trying to bring back the draft.
McCain is looking better to me all the time!
